A complex, powerful and challenging exploration of the roots and meaning of the erstwhile and continuing varieties of antisemitism by Natan Sharansky. Excerpt:
As for Western Europe, there the reputation of Israel and of the Jews has undergone a number of ups and downs over the decades. Before 1967, the shadow of the Holocaust and the perception of Israel as a small state struggling for its existence in the face of Arab aggression combined to ensure, if not the favor of the European political classes, at least a certain dispensation from harsh criticism. But all this changed in June 1967, when the truncated Jewish state achieved a seemingly miraculous victory against its massed Arab enemies in the Six-Day war, and the erstwhile victim was overnight transformed into an aggressor. A possibly apocryphal story about Jean-Paul Sartre encapsulates the shift in the European mood. Before the war, as Israel lay diplomatically isolated and Arab leaders were already trumpeting its certain demise, the famous French philosopher signed a statement in support of the Jewish state. After the war, he reproached the man who had solicited his signature: "But you assured me they would lose."Decades before "occupation" became a household word, the mood in European chancelleries and on the Left turned decidedly hostile. There were, to be sure, venal interests at stake, from the perceived need to curry favor with the oil-producing nations of the Arab world to, in later years, the perceived need to pander to the growing Muslim populations in Western Europe itself. But other currents were also at work, as anti-Western, anti-"imperialist," pacifist, and pro-liberationist sentiments, fanned and often subsidized by the USSR, took over the advanced political culture both of Europe and of international diplomacy. Behind the new hostility to Israel lay the new ideological orthodoxy, according to whose categories the Jewish state had emerged on the world scene as a certified "colonial" and "imperialist" power, a "hegemon," and an "oppressor."
I haven't had time to read all of Sharansky's analysis, but as an American Jew I'm tired of efforts to turn discussions of Israel's behavior into disquisitions on anti-Semitism as a phenomenon. Whether or not you call Israel's brutality in the Occupied Territories the cause of anti-Semitism, brutality is brutality and it is wrong. Period. Each side is responsible and morally culpable for the brutalities it commits, and it is clear that neither side in this conflict can brutalize its enemy into submission. Israel has no more moral right to engage in occupation, destruction of crops and orchards, assassinations, destruction of civilian housing, denial of medical care, etc. than any other nation, whatever threats they face. The Palestinians have no more moral right to slaugher civilians with suicide bombs than any other group, whatever their legitimate grievances.
Judaism has a millenia-old tradition of ethics, universal rights, justice, and concern for the poor. To betray that tradition, whether for Israel or any other reason, is truly anti-Jewish.
Posted by: Nick at November 3, 2003 03:54 PMYeah, Nick, but I don't think that's what Sharansky's doing here. His essay actually *is* a disquisition on antisemitism as a phenomenon.
Posted by: Dr. Frank at November 3, 2003 04:17 PM